SofTools_MetroNet Co-Operative Projects (COPs)

 Six Co-operative Projects (COP), two per Working Package (WP), are launched, following the decision of the meetings of the Steering Committee of June and of September, following the Conference AMCTM 2003 and the Annual Meeting, which approved them.
 The difficulties existing in getting new software from third parties, are well known, since most of it is likely to be considered proprietary or to be of little general use, being usually tailored to solve specific local problems. On the other hand, if the Project does not start giving an opportunity to diffuse in an easier way new developed procedures and software, the situation is not likely to improve.
 In particular, at the present stage, development of new procedures and tools, their testing and reporting on the testing should initially be considered the goals. Therefore, it has been recognised that immediate work should start in the Network in both fields, of more software components available and, of a validation becoming possible in the future.
 The following strategy was decided for each of the two problems:

1. To favour the submission of new procedures and software (in particular, WP1 and 2): MetroNet defines a limited number of Co-Operative Projects (COP), intended to be joint activities to solve specific problems, from data acquisition, to data reduction, to statistical treatment, to data retrieval, which will benefit from joining efforts to develop new criteria, new procedures, new algorithms, new software tools;
    

2. To move forward software validation (in particular WP3): MetroNet will establish Co-Operative Projects (COP), to study and develop frame criteria which should be applied to metrological software of different purposes, becoming the foundations of the validation procedure and making it possible to start producing its rules and tools. 

 Two COPs have been prepared for each WP. Each Member and Partner is invited to join them, indicating the tasks and sub-tasks of interest and a contact person for each of these tasks, and to send the form to the relevant WP Leaders. Incidentally, in order to be able to deal with the increased activities, two Leaders are now appointed for each WP:

• WP1: Gert Rietveld (NMi-VSL, Netherlands) and Jerzy Korczynski (University of Lodz, Poland)
   

• WP2: Dave Rayner (NPL, UK) and Giovanni B. Rossi (University of Genova - DIMEC, Italy)
   

• WP3: Dieter Richter (PTB, Germany) and Tanasko Tasic' (MIRS, Slovenia).

  All members and partners are expected to join at least one COP (submission expired on October 20, 2003). In particular, the COPs have been devised in order to be of appeal and interest also of the industrial participants.

 In 2003 (in minimal part) and from 2004, a substantial amount of the network funds will be devoted to these COPs, mainly for exchange of short periods of work between Members/Partners.